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Welcome! I’m an actress and blogger who lives in Los Angeles. I’ve accepted my fate that I have to chase my dreams (and document that ish along the way!) I give you my stories with all the luv and all the kiwi a gal can muster.

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I recently watched this PHENOMENAL documentary called Miss Representation. I recommend every gal watch it. It's up there with every woman needing to read the book Think by Lisa Bloom. If you don't have access to Oprah's channel then come to my place!

After I watched it, I pledged on Oprah's site to spread the word about some of the issues touched upon in the flick. Figured this would be a good start.

Dear Tish,

Last week, while browsing Walgreen’s pharmacy, I happened upon the Halloween section and spent some time looking around at what costumes were available for my children (both under two).

Like in so many other areas of society, the options were extremely limiting. The girl’s outfits were almost all centered on beauty and sexuality, while the boys were either professional (i.e. doctor) or violent (a majority of the boy's outfits included some kind of weapon).

I started to think about the impact of young girls being encouraged to dress up as sexy kittens while young boys are pushed towards hyper-masculinity and aggression.

Halloween seems to amplify our cultural trend of women being raised to manipulate their bodies and boys being taught to master their environments. With these costumes, are we again teaching girls to value themselves only for their beauty and boys to glorify violence? When are we going to provide a wider array of opportunities for our girls to portray characters that aren't easily objectified or sexualized? Where are the costumes for my daughter that actually represent power or authority?

It's not just about our children either. On PartyCity.com the Halloween page features a "Sexy Costumes" section. There are only women's costumes in this section. There's a clear imbalance here: is Halloween now for girls to dress sexy for men? The way we adults approach this holiday has a direct effect on how our kids view it. And with more and more of us participating in Halloween each year, it becomes critically important for us to think about that effect.

This Halloween I urge you to consider carefully how you dress yourself and your young ones. But since the costume stores aren’t displaying much creativity, we have to help each other come up with interesting and inspiring outfits.

We’re starting a campaign to collect positive and non-gendered Halloween costumes online. Post pictures or videos of your outfits on our Tumblr page and leave a sentence about why you chose it! Together we can start new trends and make Halloween a little less disconcerting for parents.